System and method for supporting remote accesses to a host computer from a mobile computing device
View Patent ↗Users of a client computer having non-conventional input devices interact with a host computing platform with the same user experience as if he or she was operating the client computer natively. This is achieved by having the non-conventional input devices of the client device appear local to the applications that are running on the host platform, even though the host computing platform may not be equipped with drivers for the non-conventional input devices.
1. A method of supporting remote accesses to a server computer from a client computer, comprising:
identifying input devices installed on the client computer;
configuring one or more queues in an operating system (OS) of the server computer into which events generated by the input devices installed on the client computer are injected;
injecting the events generated by the input devices into the queues as the events are received from the client computer;
notifying an application running in the server computer of some of the events injected into the queues;
updating an output of the application according to the events of which the application is notified; and
transmitting the updated output to the client computer,
wherein the queues are each a device object of the OS and each of said device objects does not have an associated device driver.
2. The method of claim 1 , wherein the queues are character devices.
3. The method of claim 2 , wherein a character device is configured for each of the different input devices.
4. The method of claim 1 , wherein the input devices comprise a touch-based input device and sensors.
5. The method of claim 1 , wherein the application is subscribed to events generated by at least one of the input devices and the events of which the application is notified comprises events generated by the said at least one of the input devices.
6. The method of claim 5 , wherein the application is an application for making and receiving telephone calls and the events the application is subscribed to are generated by microphone inputs at the client device and the output that is updated include audio from a connected telephone.
7. The method of claim 5 , wherein the application is a 3D game application and the events the application is subscribed to are generated by touch-based inputs at the computing device and the output that is updated includes 3D graphics and audio.
8. The method of claim 1 , wherein said injecting is carried out by another application running in the server computer.
9. The method of claim 1 , wherein said transmitting is carried out by said another application.
10. The method of claim 1 , wherein the events are received in native form along with a tag that identifies the input device that generated the event.
11. The method of claim 1 , wherein the server computer is a virtual machine and the OS is a guest operating system configured to support touch-based input devices and sensors executing therein.
12. The method of claim 11 , wherein the sensors include any of GPS sensor, accelerometer, magnetic field sensor, orientation sensor, temperature sensor, barometric pressure sensor, and gyroscopic sensor.
13. A non-transitory computer readable storage medium comprising instructions executable by a computer system to carry out a method of supporting remote accesses to a server computer from a client computer, said method comprising:
identifying input devices installed on the client computer;
configuring one or more queues of an operating system (OS) on the server computer into which events generated by the input devices installed on the client device are injected;
injecting the events generated by the input devices into the queues as the events are received from the client computer;
notifying an application running in the server computer of some of the events injected into the queues;
updating an output of the application according to the events of which the application is notified; and
transmitting the updated output to the client computer,
wherein the queues are each a device object of the OS and each of said device objects does not have an associated device driver.
14. The non-transitory computer readable storage medium of claim 13 , wherein the queues are character devices.
15. The non-transitory computer readable storage medium of claim 14 , wherein each of the different input devices has a corresponding character device of the character devices.
16. The non-transitory computer readable storage medium of claim 13 , wherein the input devices comprise a touch-based input device and sensors.
17. The non-transitory computer readable storage medium of claim 13 , wherein the application is subscribed to events generated by at least one of the input devices and the events of which the application is notified comprises events generated by the said at least one of the input devices.
18. The non-transitory computer readable storage medium of claim 17 , wherein the application is an application for making and receiving telephone calls and the events the application is subscribed to are generated by microphone inputs at the client device and the output that is updated include audio from a connected telephone.
19. The non-transitory computer readable storage medium of claim 17 , wherein the application is a 3D game application and the events the application is subscribed to are generated by touch-based inputs at the computing device and the output that is updated includes 3D graphics and audio.
20. The non-transitory computer readable storage medium of claim 13 , wherein the server computer is a virtual machine and the OS is a guest operating system configured to support touch-based input devices and sensors executing therein.